The exemplary embodiment relates to the field of data governance and finds particular application in connection with a system and method for managing changes in a collection of data objects.
In the field of digital information preservation, careful acquisition, organization, and distribution of resources is desirable to prevent deterioration and renew the usability of selected groups of digital objects. See, Conway, P., “Preservation in the Digital World,” Council on Library and Information Resources, Washington, D.C. (March 1996). Corporations, government agencies and other organizations may develop data management strategies to maintain their data, which may be saved in a variety of file formats, in a way that ensures that future changes are correctly implemented. Existing efforts often focus on extending the life of digital materials beyond their period of creation. However, the initial intentions and assumptions made are often not taken into account. This lack of knowledge about the context of data objects limits understanding, use, care, and sustainable governance of them. See, Beaudoin, J. E., “Context and Its Role in the Digital Preservation of Cultural Objects,” D-Lib Magazine, Vol. 18, No. 11/12 (November 2012).
As an example, software induced accidents have been attributed, in part, to poor maintenance. See, Chris Johnson, “Forensic Software Engineering and the Need for New Approaches to Accident Investigation,” Computer Safety, Reliability and Security, Vol. 1943 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp 420-429 (June 2001), hereinafter, Johnson 2001. Although many industries already have certification procedures for software maintenance, many companies experience great difficulties in maintaining their software safety cases in the face of new requirements or changing environmental circumstances. The preservation of software systems could benefit if specifications supported wider questions about the reasons why certain approaches were adopted. See, Nancy G. Leveson, “Intent Specifications: An Approach to Building Human-Centered Specifications,” IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 26, 1, pp. 15-35 (2000), hereinafter, Leveson 2000.
One proposal to address this is to generate intent specification documents that record the context of intended use, including the intent or purpose of the software. These could help by explaining the reasons why any changes were made. For example, preservation intent statements, which are records of the preservation intent for specific classes of digital content, and definitions of significant properties of the collections and objects to be preserved, have been developed. See, Webb, C., et al., “‘Oh, you wanted us to preserve that?!’ Statements of Preservation Intent for the National Library of Australia's Digital Collections,” D-Lib Magazine, Vol. 19, No. 1/2, 2013.
Being able to identify how changes can affect the initial context is especially beneficial in digital preservation environments that are subject to continual change. Preservation models that consider both preservation and active life are desirable. To maintain the reusability of complex digital objects and their associated environment, risks that can occur due to changes in the environment should be evaluated, to allow determining and performing appropriate mitigating actions. See, N. Lagos, et al., “On the Preservation of Evolving Digital Content—The Continuum Approach and Relevant Metadata Models,” in Metadata and Semantics Research, vol. 544, E. Garoufallou, et al., Eds., pp. 15-26, 2015.
However, existing approaches tend to consider digital objects individually. They do not take into consideration that changes to one digital object may impact other digital objects.